Daily Archives: December 2, 2011

Claude Rajotte is a familiar name to long-time CHOM listeners. The francophone music expert worked at the rock station for two decades, often speaking in French until the CRTC told him he couldn’t do that anymore. He also worked on the other side of the language divide, spending about as much time at MusiquePlus.

Until recently he had a job at Espace Musique, Radio-Canada’s music radio network. But when RadCan wanted to kill his show and move him online, he left. He took a job back at MusiquePlus, where he hosts two shows, Rajotte (Fridays at 7pm) and Hors Circuit (Sunday mornings at 1am). They’re not exactly big-budget shows (Hors Circuit in particular looks pretty cheap), but the quality is in Rajotte’s biting commentary (like tonight where he trashed Nickelback by saying they seem to be stuck in a 90s time-warp).

Having gone back to MusiquePlus, Rajotte wondered if maybe he could get a job at CHOM as well. But, La Presse reported, CHOM said no.

It’s not because they’re not interested, explained Astral Media VP Martin Spalding, just that they don’t have any openings for him. “There wasn’t an opportunity,” Spalding said. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be an opportunity in the future.”

Spalding explained that giving Rajotte a show would mean cutting the time of existing staff like Bilal Butt, who hosts evenings. “For the time being, we want to allow Bilal to grow in that timeslot,” Spalding said.

Sadly, the radio market isn’t what it was even a decade ago, and the anglophone music stations aren’t as eager as the francophone ones to grab big names to do an hour a day.

Could fate open up an opportunity for Rajotte at his other former home? As Spalding would say, never say never. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I’m not a fan of fundraising. It’s panhandling for the middle class. It’s guilt-tripping, getting people to overpay for stuff they don’t even want, or worse – “pledge” in favour of someone doing something entirely unnecessary. And they can’t complain because, well, it’s all for a good cause.

I’ve also never been a moustache man. But I thought it might be fun to try it for a month in the spirit of Movember. Dreading the thought of asking people to donate in exchange for nothing more than the honour of seeing me look like a 70s used car salesman, I decided I’d make a donation of my own at the end.

I thought I’d be a bit clever by making the donation dependent on the number of hairs my face could produce in that gap between my nose and lip. As it turns out, there’s a lot of them, and they’re very difficult to count.

My best estimate, by looking at the sink after shaving, was about 500. Multiplied by the entirely arbitrary figure of 25 cents per, that gives me $125, which I just sent to the Movember people to spend trying to cure prostate cancer. I figure that’ll be enough to put them over the top.

Todd van der Heyden, who has been anchoring CTV Montreal’s noon and 6pm newscasts with Mutsumi Takahashi since 2008, will be leaving the station and moving to Toronto to accept a job as an anchor on CTV News Channel, CTV announced on Friday.